Significant Recent Federal Legislation

Placement of Foster Children

The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act (H.R. 6893/P.L. 110-351) will help hundreds of thousands of children and youth in foster care by promoting permanent families for them through relative guardianship and adoption and improving education and health care. Additionally, it will extend federal support for youth to age 21.

The Act provides the following:

Notice to relatives when children enter care

Funds for Kinship Navigator programs to help connect children living with relatives with support and assistance

Subsidized guardianship payments for relatives

Licensing standards for relatives

Increased incentives to states to find adoptive families

Adoption assistance

Requiring states to make reasonable efforts to place siblings together

Helping youth who turn 18 in foster care without permanent families to remain in care to age 19, 20, or 21 with continued federal support

Educational stability (requiring that states ensure that foster children remain in their same school where appropriate) – Health care coordination.

Safe & Timely Interstate Placement of Foster Children Act of 2006 (PL 109-239) is designed to improve the process by which foster children are placed across state lines.

The Act provides the following:

States shall receive incentive payments to complete home study requirements within 30 days ($1500 per timely interstate home study); and,

Receiving states shall complete home studies requested by another state within 60 days of request. If the state cannot complete the home study due to circumstances beyond its control, such as the failure by a federal agency to return background check information or failure to receive required medical records, the receiving state may request an additional 15 days to complete the home study. However, the receiving state must document that it made the necessary records requests at least 45 days prior to the end of the initial 60 day period.